SCROOGE is alive and well and living in the City Chambers.

Last week, councillors met to decide their budget for the year from April and to reveal how they planned to make £83million of savings.

While some of Labour’s plans were to be expected, others came out of left field.

The major saving will come from shedding a further 1500 jobs in the coming year through natural wastage.

But it is some of the smaller savings which will really irritate some city residents.

For example, the council has decided to review the activities it stages at Christmas saying it is clear savings will have to found in the festive programme.

Whether that will be scrapping the ice rink, big wheel, or festive crib has yet to be decided but council officers will be looking at all options in the coming months.

The scale of what is axed will determine how much money can be saved to help plug the budget black hole.

A total of £1.5m will be cut from the garden maintenance scheme for people who are not fit enough to do the work themselves.

That will result in residents having their grass and hedges cut fewer times each year.

A further £700,000 will be saved by giving the city’s schools, museums, libraries and office buildings a quick flick with a duster instead of a deep clean.

The council admits the saving will result in them being cleaned less often and to a lower standard.

Graffiti is an issue which drives city residents up the wall but £48,000 will be taken from the budget to clean the unsightly mess.

At the moment there is a priority service for areas which experience a higher level of the unsightly blight.

But from April, that will be scrapped resulting in it taking longer to remove some graffiti.

Culture vultures have not been spared in the council’s scrabble to find the savings it needs.

It plans to cut its cash for culture by £208,000 by reviewing grants with a plan to remove support for the Theatre Royal and reduce grants for the King’s Theatre and Pollok House by 10%.

There will also be a £6.15m cut in community grants although the council insists the main areas to be targeted will be Police Scotland and its own arm’s length organisations like City Building.

The plan is to refocus the remaining funding to benefit smaller, community-based groups and organisations across the city.

While the news sound bad, it could have been even worse.

Councillors decided to use reserves and other means to bring the level of cuts in the next financial year down from £83m to £58.

Heaven only knows what else would have faced the chop if they had been forced to find other ways to save £25m.